Only if you were dumb enough to design the quick charge system with an interconnect based on wires. It is likely a real engineer will design the system with bus bars.
His numbers do look right but his conclusion is bogus.
And you are right, the charging solutions will likely rely on bus bars not the romex wiring in your house. But the article had no suggestion that the charge would come from the AC service panel in your house. This is what it says...
The company responsible for the battery pack, DBM Energy, claims a battery pack efficiency of 97 percent and a recharge time of around 6 minutes when charged from a direct current source.
I suspect your house does not have a direct current source and I am positive they are not referring to a direct charge from a 240 Volt AC service. But then your house likely doesn't have a 5,000 gallon underground double walled gasoline storage tank and a pump in the garage to fill up either.
While you bring up an interesting point in the end your conclusion is the rubbish. It is funny because with your comments and many others on this topic we will always be using oil because nothing else is feasible, except this ignores all the arguments on how infeasible gasoline cars would be and yet here we are.
The problems facing the delivery of 1.8MW in 6 minutes is actually not that big of a deal. The electrical power industry has been doing it for decades. The solution will be a complete system that addresses each point of weakness. Your scary images of melting cars, chargers and batteries almost seems realistic when you consider a 600 Volt charger providing 1.8 Mega Watts in 6 minutes is going to push 3000 Amperes or more but in the real world a 3000 Ampere bus bar system at 600 Volts is not an issue and likely would rely on passive cooling and proper sizing to ensure high efficiency.
There are many other scary boogey man points that others will bring up but the fact is there is science and engineering that will address every one of them. When Charles Kettering invented the battery powered electric starter motor to replace hand cranks to start gasoline engines it was thought to be impossible due to the limitations of batteries, conductors and electric motors. But when it comes to new ideas and pushing changes in technology I think Kettering said it best...
"The world hates change, but it is the only thing that has brought progress." - Charles Kettering
California is a GDP monster and while it is true that in recent decades the number of people employed in manufacturing jobs has decreased in California they still employ a huge number and I suspect part of the reason manufacturing is moving elsewhere is not due to cost of living, taxes or regulations, it is because of competition for employees. Other technical industries in California are sucking up all the engineers and manufacturing has to compete with these other industries.
And as far as the arguments that California has only micro-electronic engineers, pure BS, there are companies like Lam Research and Applied Materials that make the machines used for micro-electronic manufacturing and anyone who has worked on the machines knows they are heavy duty machines with a ton of mechanical engineering put into them.
But there are a lot of people who want to see California fail for political reasons, there is plenty of hate from all directions directed at California, but even with their economic problems today their GDP puts pretty much everyone else to shame. Hell, they are supporting some of the other states with Federal tax dollars taken from California.
they'll have to import engineers from elsewhere since the ones already in the place are only qualified in microelectronics and aren't qualified in the heavy duty engineering needed for manufacturing
There seems to be some serious ignorance on manufacturing in California. There are several equipment manufacturers in California who produce the heavy manufacturing tooling used for micro-electronics manufacturing. As someone with experience installing and maintaining these machines I can assure everyone that the mechanical engineers in California will have no problem designing and building cars.
While places like Detroit do have better expertise in automotive specific engineering, i.e. chassis, the engineers in California are far from devoid of knowledge and expertise in heavy equipment and mechanical engineering. The heavy machines designed and manufactured in California today are considerably more complicated than a car.
on sourceforge (all 250,000 of them), a few are great, many are average and by far the largest part are abandoned, half-finished and/or complete garbage. It doesn't mean that open source means incompetent but it doesn't automatically mean competent either, you have to look at the specific project.
It is very easy to start a project on sourceforge and once it has been started it will stick around no matter what. This means that many projects are started on a whim or from what at first seems like a great idea but eventually are abandoned for a wide array of reasons.
While it is possible that the reason a project is abandoned is due to competence there is no way to verify this unless a project reaches the point where some code is uploaded to the version system or released for download there is no means of measuring competence. When you have the code then you can measure competence.
Probably on the whole commercial products are better if only because people have money invested in them and they are less likely to get bored with them half way through.
On the whole commercial products do not provide source code and when they fail you never even hear about the failure. There is no way to compare abandoned or even garbage open source projects on sourceforge directly with the commercial market where failure and incompetence are hidden in the commercial market.
If you really want to know if open source is competent then you need to compare the software that is used with the industry as a whole. There have been a few of these studies over the years and popular open source applications fair very well.
In this report there is a reference to a 2003 study by a company named Reason that analyses software code.
In Table 2 of the report the Linux kernel version 2.4.19 TCP/IP stack had a defects/KLSC of 0.10 while the industry networking code values for the best third of software houses was less than 0.15, the middle third is 0.15 to 0.35 and the worst third are > 0.35.
They also compared Apache 2.1-dev release with a defects/KLSC of 0.53 compared to similar industry software that ranked less than 0.36 for the top third, 0.36 to 0.71 for the middle third and greater than 0.71 for the worst third.
Open source is not incompetent, it easily falls inline with commercial software.
Can you find open source applications with bugs, issues, and bad code, absolutely yes. Can you find closed source applications with bugs, issues, and bad code, absolutely yes on the bugs and issues, you have no idea on the code.
From another study on the costs involved in auto manufacturing completed at MIT Vehicle Manufacturing Assembly Labor and Other Manufacturing Costs = 6.5% of MSRP
Assuming an average family household and both adults work in auto manufacturing the gross income will be at least $116, 800. Looking at IRS statistics for the adjusted gross income level of $100,000 to $200,000 the average household income is $132,881 and after deductions paid $17,388 in income tax. The is an effective 13% tax rate on gross income.
So on a $25,000 car with 6.5% going to wages and an effective 13% tax rate on those wages the portion of the retail cost is $211.25 and add to that the corporate gross profit of 6% from the Stanford auto manufacturing study and a 35% tax rate we have another $525 for a total of $736.25 of income tax in the retail price of a $25,000 automobile which is 2.9%.
And yes, I know there are all kinds of other little taxes here and there you want to throw in to where we are no longer talking about income tax but it becomes so convoluted its not clear exactly how everything is associated anymore, but it doesn't matter. Even if the auto manufacturing workers paid 100% of their income in income taxes you still would not be even close to 22%.
But setting all of that data showing the 22% is bogus aside and just assuming this fantasy world is real lets take a quick look at this Fair Tax. With the word "Fair" in its name it sounds great, we all like fair don't we, but reading Boortz he specifically states that "the FairTax plan was revenue neutral". Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are suggesting but it appears you want no taxes while the FairTax being revenue neutral is not a no tax plan but instead is just tax reform with the same level of taxation but shifted around so revenue for the government, corporations and employees remains the same.
But even in Boortz' comments he makes some outlandish suggestions such as "When the FairTax is implemented, and when business and personal income and payroll taxes disappear, your employer is going to have to make a decision. He will either take some or the entire amount he had been withholding for federal income and payroll taxes and add it to your weekly check, or he will readjust your pay figures so that your entire paycheck will be equal to what you used to call "take home pay" before the FairTax."
HA HA HA!!! Now that is hilarious! Eliminate the payroll tax, which in layman terms means take away the Social Security and Medicare safety net that ensures a minimal level of support for U.S. workers when they reach retirement age, and let the corporations decide if they should keep all that money themselves or maybe if they are nice they will give the U.S. workers some crumbs. Sorry but in the real world history has shown over and over and over that given the opportunity the U.S. worker will get screwed. Scrap that "Fair" Tax plan and try working out something more realistic.:)
Actually, using your scenario and even real world data, no, income taxes are not an issue for manufacturing in the United States.
About 22%, on avarege, of the price of American goods goes to pay income taxes incurred by US manufacturers. About 11.5% is recoverable by the companies if the income tax went away. Would a $25,000 Jeep Liberty selling for $22,125 sell better?
I believe you and I will have a very strong agreement on the importance of manufacturing in the United States. It is not only important for the United States economically but also for our national security and future prosperity. But where we will disagree is on income taxes imposed on manufacturing corporations.
First let me state that I think you are on to a very accurate and strong principle that has to do with global competition. Part of the cost in global competition is related to taxes and the cost of running the government of each nation. If the United States is bearing the burden of security costs around the world while other nations skimp on governmental security expenses then the United States will be placed at a significant economic disadvantage. All one has to do is look at French history before and after the American Revolutionary War to see how economic burden can destroy a nation.
That said, corporate taxes are levied on Gross Profits, not Retail Sales Prices. Based on this fact it becomes readily apparent that the amount of tax dollars in the retail price of a manufactured good is completely dependant upon the Gross Profit Margin. So we end up with the following equation:
You say on average U.S. manufacturers have a 22% income tax burden attached to the price of retail goods. So we can calculate the average gross margin and verify this with real world numbers. 22% / 35% = 63% Gross Margin.
I am not sure where you acquired that 22% number but to me it looks like BS. From my personal experience with gross margins in electronics manufacturing a 63% gross margin profit is unheard of. In fact, based on recent data the highest gross margin for electronics manufacturers was 58.4%. From my experience the average gross margin is more like 20% to 40%.
And while I understand you are only making a point with the auto analogy I must point out that auto manufacturers have abysmal profit margins and as a result the average cost of corporate income taxes on the retail price of a car is more like 1%.
No, I have done some research in the past using real economic numbers and came to the same conclusion before all these articles started hitting the news. Much of the economic data collected by the federal government is readily accessible for anyone to analyze. Well unless of course its all just a big conspiracy.:)
a mdae up statistic, to make the masses feel wronged. It's a complete lie.
Well, it is definitely not a lie, I have witnessed some of the financial gaming first hand. But I agree that it can make the masses feel wronged and becomes a political bullet point.
Teh standard of living in the US for the poorest people has been increasing for the last 200 years.
Yes, and since you called me on it I will also admit that the title in my comment is inflammatory and not 100% accurate.:)
There have only been a few years here and there when median income has dropped and you are correct that for the most part the standard of living in the U.S. has improved in the long run.
But here is a fact that you can verify by pulling the numbers yourself. From the late 1940s to the mid 1970s the GDP and median individual income increased at an average rate of 4.23% and 2.04% respectively. From the mid 1970s to 2008 GDP and median individual income increased at an average rate of 2.57% and 0.48% respectively.
The past 30 or so years the average worker in the U.S. has not participated in the increases in wealth in this nation but there was a decade in there that wasn't too bad. From 1990 to 2000 GDP grew at an average of 2.80% and median individual income increased at an average of 1.26%.
But the past decade or so from 2000 to 2008 has seen GDP growth average 1.89% while median individual income has actually dropped with an average change of -0.29%.
Yes, I'm throwing out a lot of numbers without specific point and click references, that is because you will not find a nice point an click party politics web site with these numbers. You need to got to bls.gov, census.gov, and other sites that have historical data readily available to collect and analyse yourself. Well, unless it is all an evil socialist/communist conspiracy by islamofascists from planet X.:)
Actually, no, it is not caused by income taxes. There is a slide in that presentation that shows some trends in effective tax rates and if anything they are lower than they have been in a long time. And when you consider that federal spending as a percentage of GDP has fluctuated around 18% and 22% for the past 30 or so years yet the debit is increasing it makes sense, flat spending but falling tax rates equals debt.
And on factories moving over seas, absolutely, that is one of the forces affecting median income. But again it is not taxes. As an engineer I've spent my share of time going over factory finances and the largest expense, and easiest to adjust through layoffs and closing factories, is head count and salaries. Companies have done a very good job of working out deals to get tax cuts both federal and state but your average U.S. worker can't do much to compete with crap wages over seas except perhaps live in a cardboard box or move the U.S. back to the old days of the company store where you pay your employer for housing, groceries, even your church.
And I probably should not say degradation of income, its more like flat income, but I'll comment on that in a response to the coward below.:)
Another way to look at how technology does not equate with 'progress'.
Only because you are looking at the wrong end of the eye piece your using to judge society.
Are followers of bronze age religions who have learned to click a few buttons a sign of progress through technology? No.
Holding a chunk of technology in your hand that required 100 years or more of scientific research and study to develop does not transfer the progress made by the many people before the subject into the subject's mind through osmosis. It is a very common misconception that wielding technology somehow makes you an advanced technological being, it doesn't.
Without the education to fully understand the wielded technology and a good dose of critical thinking that may very well dispel the stone and bronze age myths a society has lived by for many generations the technology will only become a part of the mythology.
If instead of viewing and judging the effects of technology by looking at the end users you viewed those who actually do the study, research and development it is more likely you will find the progress you are looking for.
But I will state that continuous technological advancement and progress of humanity is not guaranteed by the advances in science and technology. While it may not be the stated intent of these religious search engines, and the political engines I've seen mentioned as well, to halt, impede, and often reverse all technological advancement and human progress that is the result they will affect if not critically addressed.
Tolerance of ignorance and stupidity are the enemies of human progress and they are the enemies of scientific and technological advancement. While individuals should be allowed to tightly grasp their failed ideologies they should not be allowed to evangelise their failed dogma without rebuttal no matter how much it hurts their feelings.
Standard Oil was not the only oil company, and had minor players. People were always free to buy from them. Windows was not the only operating system, you could always use Linux or buy a Mac.
You bring up a good point about not requiring a complete monopoly nor lock-in to run afoul of the law, however, I think the facts of both Standard Oil's business practices and Microsoft's business practices made it so you were not always free to buy from competitors.
Standard Oil used business partnerships and buying up relevant assets to make it virtually impossible for competitors to bring their product to market.
The wiki article for Standard Oil shows a need for citations so I would recommend further research, however, Microsoft's practices are well documented in the Finding of Facts from the US DOJ vs Microsoft case where Microsoft was found guilty of violating anti-trust laws.
Microsoft uses similar tactics to block access to markets. So I think it is wrong to suggest that people are always free to buy from competitors, it is not that simple.
But getting back to your main point, the fact that Google has a monopoly is not an issue but if they use that monopoly position to block competitors from the market then Google will be in violation of anti-trust laws. They will not be in violation for being a monopoly, that is not illegal, they will be in violation of using their monopoly position to block competitors and protect their monopoly position from competition.
That is exactly what got Standard Oil in trouble and Microsoft as well. They used their position in the market to destroy competitors so they would not have to deal with the difficulties of market competition.
We can only wait to see if there is any merit to the case but the fact that it seems Microsoft is behind the legal attack it appears at the moment to be the MO of a corporation that has been found guilty of multiple violations of anti-trust laws.
All you have to do to "dehumanize" an Embryo is merely show a picture of one.
I think what you meant to say is that all you have to do to "dehumanize" a Blastocyst is merely show a picture of one.
I am curious how it was ruled that the research was illegal due to the destruction of embryos when in fact the blastocyst is technically not an embryo and in the case of the research never will be. The embryonic stem cells are extracted from a blastocyst with is a cellular stage prior to the formation of an embryo. No embryos are destroyed. And the blastocysts are artificially fertilized outside of a human womb so they will actually never grow into an embryo let alone a human being.
Since you commented anonymously I don't know if you will see this but I will reply anyhow.
It has to do with drawing the line as to what you call a human. Is a baby a human? Is a 6 or 3 month old fetus a human? Is a single fertilized egg a human? There's no easy answer because people can't even agree on how to define a human when it's full grown.
Which is why it is very important to squash the perpetuated lies about abortions being used for embryonic stem cell research. Rather than base a moral decision on visions of dead babies it is better to learn the facts. And the fact is that there is a hugely significant difference between a fertilized egg and a 3 month old fetus, and the difference becomes even more significant when we consider that these are not fertilized eggs inside a womb that have some calculable probability of gestating and growing into a human baby. We are talking about human cells that will absolutely never gestate into a human for the same reason that an unused egg lost through menstruation or sperm ejaculated during a wet dream or even a naturally fertilized egg that fails to embed to the uterus wall will absolutely positively never become human babies even though they are human cells and under the appropriate conditions would actually have a reasonable probability of becoming a human.
why all the fuss over embryonic stem cells? I'm not a bio-chem guy but I know enough to understand the arguements, and the one thing I don't get is that there are better stem cells out there than embryonic. Embryonic stem cells people think have a lot of promise, but they're blank slates and if you were to regrow some sort of damaged tissue, how would you control the growth so it doesn't become some cancerous tumour, especially when it's harvested from an outside source?
It is my hope that a discovery is made that will make this question moot, however, as it stands today there are significant advantages in the use of embryonic stem cells. I have no intention of going through all the article research again but a few months back I had this same discussion with another individual and based on what I have read the adult stem cells actually present a greater risk of cancer than embryonic stem cells. In fact, the wiki article you linked to provides references to research suggesting adult stem cells are the source of cancer.
But I will provide one additional link before I end my commenting, the utilization of stem cells, adult or embryonic, as a source for cures to diseases will require a plentiful supply of cells. This is exactly where adult stem cells fail as noted at the National Institutes of Health.
"Embryonic stem cells can be grown relatively easily in culture. Adult stem cells are rare in mature tissues, so isolating these cells from an adult tissue is challenging, and methods to expand their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out. This is an important distinction, as large numbers of cells are needed for stem cell replacement therapies."
There are so many miscarriages and abortions anyways that theres no need to not use the byproduct for something useful.
Embryonic stem cells are not harvested from miscarriages or abortions. They are harvested from artificially fertilized eggs that grow into embryos and have reached the blastocyst phase and have grown to 50 to 150 cells in size.
The blastocyst that is the source of ebryonic stem cells has never came into contact with a uterus, has never been implanted into the wall of a uterus and absolutely positively never will develop beyond the blastocyst phase since there is no uterus in which to embed itself and start the process of developing the umbilical cord.
There are ethical issues that we need to deal with but it is important to have the facts on which to base conclusions as there are many people who try to confuse the uninformed and have them believe that the evil scientists are ripping babies from the womb and killing them to collect stem cells. This is nowhere near reality.
Actually it is not even that. The article claims to measure "Linux distribution popularity trends" when in fact, as you noted, it is a measure of Linux distribution name search popularity trends.
While the article makes an inaccurate claim the information is interesting. From my experience with freelance software development both inside and outside the United States I have the impression that CentOS, RHEL and Fedora linux distributions are much more popular than the article presumes.
So out of curiosity I modified the search terms for the trends by adding "download install" to each distribution name the author had searched and the results are similar in some cases and dramatically different in others. The desktop focused distributions show similar trends but the Ubuntu trend line is not as prominent, you can actually see the other distributions still have a significant number of searches. On the newer second tier distributions where Linux Mint was shown as wildly popular and CentOS was hanging around Puppy Linux the chart is completely different and reflects my experience in the real world, CentOS is exceedingly more popular than Mint or Puppy.
A simple PHP application running on a LAMP or LAPP server can easily be created to upload files and encrypt them with a custom SSL certificate using openssl. I did a demo for something very similar for a client.
Of course there are many avenues of risk between the upload to encryption path and the decryption to download path. Some of the risk can be reduced by choosing the right hosting method.
The cheapest solution would be free web hosting for the application but I am not sure they will have an SSL connection available for the hosted application. A better solution would be to set up a private server on your home broadband connection to host the application and you could use a self signed SSL certificate.
But either way you still have some risk at your end of the SSL encryption due to man in the middle attacks by your IT group or they can easily monitor all file activity at your PC after the encryption.
As others have noted if you really don't want the information to get out then don't store it on a public server and don't use equipment at work to use or transfer the information. Other than that caveat there are some inexpensive options that can provide a significant level of protection.
With some research what you will find is that he original Section 179 tax code came about some time in the 1940s, I believe it was updated in the 1970s to include trucks for farmers, in 1996 the maximum amount that could be expensed was increased and finally when SUVs became all the rage and somebody discovered a sneaky way to squeeze personal luxury SUVs through Section 179 if you were a business owner or partner the house and senate came up with the idea of increasing the maximum from $25,000 to $100,000 and Bush signed it into law.
The truth is that most of the luxury SUVs written off as a business expense should have been investigated and prosecuted by the IRS. The linked article clearly does not interview a farmer but instead a health care consultant who obviously does not need an Ford Excursion for his business so it is obviously a personal purchase illegally written off as a business expense.
So no, Bush did not sign the original bill but he was not helping by signing off on the quadrupling of the amount that could be written off. He should have vetoed the entire bill and at the very least keep the write off maximum at previous levels if there was no way to stop the scheming altogether.
You misrepresent that story. To start with, it was not a tax credit. It was a rule that allowed businesses to buy a truck and expense it in one year instead of depreciating it over many years. Not individuals, businesses.
And if you read the story you will discover that the Ford Excursion was purchased by a small business owner who provides health care consulting. While it was written off as a business expense it is obviously not something purchased specifically for health care consulting.
Businesses only pay tax on profits. Profits are revenues minus costs. Buying a truck is a cost....
And this is a sound concept for business costs, but again if you read the article what was actually happening was individuals who filed a K1 as a business owner or partner were purchasing what were obviously personal vehicles and writing them off as a one time business expense.
And no, the $7,500 tax credit does not equate to a $7,500 tax refund check simply because you hate Obama.
Individuals often have income, they pay income tax, the tax credit will reduce their tax burden as an incentive to purchase a vehicle that has significant benefits to all tax payers. Yes I know we could debate the benefits from now until eternity but that is the purpose.
So, speaking of honesty, what we have here are a lot of very dishonest people using tax code that is meant for business expenses to purchase monster trucks which they write off as a business expense. The business should be paying taxes on that write off because it really was not a business expense.
Karl Wizinsky wasn't thinking about buying a new vehicle, and certainly not a big SUV. So why is there a brand-new $47,000 Ford Excursion sitting in his driveway?... "We really did it because it was a pretty hefty deduction," said Wizinsky, a health care consultant in Novi, Mich.
Because health care consultants absolutely require the most massive SUV on the market in order to provide their consulting service.
At the same time the tax code sanctions $30,000 write-offs for SUVs, prospective purchasers of a fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles qualify for a relatively small $4,000 tax credit.
Because not only can't the health care consultant utilize a small hybrid car for his service his business just wouldn't be viable with a measly $4,000 tax credit, the tax payers really benefit from giving this guy and others $30,000 in write offs to buy their monster trucks.
At the same time, the tax break seems to contradict other national goals, such as improving vehicle fuel efficiency. A more economical fleet would aid two important national goals: reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil and cutting greenhouse gasses.
Uh, yeah, everyone knows that a hummer does more to slow the flow of cash from the United States consumers to the middle east nations paying for terrorism that kills United States citizens than a Hybrid ever will, or something.
Suppose a business owner wants to purchase a $45,000 luxury SUV for use in his business. He could write off $24,000 of the cost under section 179 of the tax code as accelerated depreciation. Then the buyer could write off additional depreciation of the remaining $21,000 under a five-year schedule -- 20%, or $4,200, in the first year.
Okay, if you read the article make sure you skip that part.
The House of Representatives attempted to make the SUV tax break even more generous as Congress debated an economic stimulus package in March.
Under the House plan, the cap for accelerated depreciation would have risen from $24,000 to $35,000. That effort died in negotiations with the Senate.
Okay, that's it, I don't have any sarcasm left. What kind of dipshit would read that news article and not come to the conclusion that the Federal government under Bush was subsidizing monster trucks? Holy shit, get real.
Pluripotent Adult Stem Cells I'm sorry you missed the memo. Pluripotent ASC have been derived from adult skin cells. ESC research is fast becoming obsolete.
First let me thank you for providing a link to the information used to form your opinion. Too often people state their opinions as facts and expect everyone to accept them at face value. The internet and forums like slashdot provide an exceptional means of discussing issues and providing background information to help people understand your position.
Second, I have read about the work on adult pluripotent stem cells as an option and this is exceptional work cited in the article and shows potential to advance the fields of medicine and biosciences significantly. It also provides an opportunity to make an end run around this debate on morality for some people.
But I have to ask, did you actually read the article before you posted it or did you only read the headline and skim the content?
Although promising, both techniques share a downside. The retroviruses used to insert the genes could cause tumors in tissues grown from the cells.
Once the kinks are worked out, "the whole field is going to completely change," says stem cell researcher Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University in East Lansing. "People working on ethics will have to find something new to worry about."
Pluripotent stem cells from adult cells currently is not an option, only a valuable line of research that has the potential to create viable pluripotent stem cells from adult cells.
Spermatozoa and ovam are not people. Human zygotes are. Why would you assume I'm totally ignorant of basic science? Does the fact that I'm religious make you think that I'll buy something that stupid?
I think you answered your own question.
A human zygote is obviously not a person for the same reason a spermatozoa and ovam are not a person either. Am I wrong in assuming your initial inflammatory comment claiming embryonic stem cell research creates a demand for dead babies is based on the same basic assumption that a human zygote is a person? That assumption being that the zygote or blastocyst may grow into a person when inside a uterus. Or do you have some other sensible logic to explain this conclusion that a zygote is a person?
You see, a zygote is not a person, I have seen photos and video of microscopic zygotes and they are not persons. Given the right conditions and a uterus a zygote has a certain probability of growing into a person but just like spermatozoa and ovams a zygote will never grow into a person without the correct conditions. And I suspect most of the people using this argument against embryonic stem cell research know this but it is much more powerful to tell people who are uneducated in even the most basic biological functions that babies are killed to produce embryonic stem cells. If you read through the comments in your thread you will find at least one person who took the argument further, perhaps out of ignorance, and assumed these dead babies were from abortions.
But if we do assume that a zygote is a person, human, a baby and the embryonic stem cell researchers using in vitro embryos are in effect killing babies (even though they will absolutely never grow into a baby) then what will be the reaction when the adult stem cell research progresses to the point that researchers are capable of growing a viable blastocyst from any human cell, will that blastocyst be a human as well?
I suspect I already know the answer and I will likely disagree but I think it is a good question to force minds to think beyond the frail terms in which they are forming their opinions.
According to the Christian Bible, it's morally objectionable to spill a man's seed on the ground, so the case could be made.
You don't have to, we place limits on what we find objectionable all the time. We have varying degrees of just about everything we find objectionable.
However, it's certainly possible to go as far as you suggest from a strict reading of the Bible.
And that is part of the direction I am trying to lead people, no civilized society today follows the moral recommendations of the bible to the letter because honestly there is some dumb and barbaric suggestions in the bible.
I personally do not support abortions as a contraceptive method for moral reasons probably similar to yours, but I also oppose allowing a bronze age religion be used to establish civilized law when the religion itself is barbaric.
And while I thought the information I posted in the previous comments made it very clear I guess it was not clear enough, so let me state this again...
No babies are killed for stem cells,
abortions are not used for stem cell research,
no zygotes or blastocysts are removed from any women's wombs for stem cell research.
You can blather until you are blue in the face about abortions and baby killing when speaking of stem cell research and it is meaningless. Babies are not aborted to provide research material for stem cell research, this is simply a method of painting a false picture of the researchers as baby killers ripping viable babies from the womb and killing them.
The blastocysts used for stem cell research come from in vitro fertilization, the zygote never comes into contact with a uterus, it will never develop into a baby, not even close.
Now, since it is known that the blastocysts will never be babies but only present a potential if introduced into a viable uterus, and one of the responses to my comments even admitted to this, the logic behind the opposition to embryonic stem cell research has nothing to do with killing babies but instead has to do with the probability of a blastocyst growing into a baby IF it were introduced into a viable uterus.
This same logic obviously applies to the ovam and sperm cells as well. They have a similar probability of forming a baby as the in vitro blastocyst given the proper circumstances. Yes, I know, it becomes a stupid argument that requires you to start applying the logic discriminatingly, because it is a weak argument.
A sperm, ovam, in vitro zygote, and in vitro blastocyst are not babies.
Sperm and egg individually will never become a person, but an embryo will be (and should be considered as) a person.
An embryo from in vitro fertilisation will absolutely never become a person unless it is placed inside a human womb.
A zygote or blastocyst are no more a person than a sperm or ovam.
If you consider a zygote or blastocyst to be a person solely on the probability of it becoming a person under the correct circumstances then by your own logic a sperm cell and an ovam cell are also a person due to their probability of becoming a person under the correct circumstances.
The fact is that you can derive pluripotent stem cells from sources other than embryo's
Please provide links to back up your facts. Don't take this wrong, I am not saying you are wrong, but providing links is a valuable way of sharing your knowledge because simply stating something as a fact does not make it a fact. Help us out.
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Only if you were dumb enough to design the quick charge system with an interconnect based on wires. It is likely a real engineer will design the system with bus bars.
His numbers do look right but his conclusion is bogus.
And you are right, the charging solutions will likely rely on bus bars not the romex wiring in your house. But the article had no suggestion that the charge would come from the AC service panel in your house. This is what it says...
I suspect your house does not have a direct current source and I am positive they are not referring to a direct charge from a 240 Volt AC service. But then your house likely doesn't have a 5,000 gallon underground double walled gasoline storage tank and a pump in the garage to fill up either.
While you bring up an interesting point in the end your conclusion is the rubbish. It is funny because with your comments and many others on this topic we will always be using oil because nothing else is feasible, except this ignores all the arguments on how infeasible gasoline cars would be and yet here we are.
The problems facing the delivery of 1.8MW in 6 minutes is actually not that big of a deal. The electrical power industry has been doing it for decades. The solution will be a complete system that addresses each point of weakness. Your scary images of melting cars, chargers and batteries almost seems realistic when you consider a 600 Volt charger providing 1.8 Mega Watts in 6 minutes is going to push 3000 Amperes or more but in the real world a 3000 Ampere bus bar system at 600 Volts is not an issue and likely would rely on passive cooling and proper sizing to ensure high efficiency.
There are many other scary boogey man points that others will bring up but the fact is there is science and engineering that will address every one of them. When Charles Kettering invented the battery powered electric starter motor to replace hand cranks to start gasoline engines it was thought to be impossible due to the limitations of batteries, conductors and electric motors. But when it comes to new ideas and pushing changes in technology I think Kettering said it best...
"The world hates change, but it is the only thing that has brought progress." - Charles Kettering
Don't spoil their doom and gloom with facts. ;)
California is a GDP monster and while it is true that in recent decades the number of people employed in manufacturing jobs has decreased in California they still employ a huge number and I suspect part of the reason manufacturing is moving elsewhere is not due to cost of living, taxes or regulations, it is because of competition for employees. Other technical industries in California are sucking up all the engineers and manufacturing has to compete with these other industries.
And as far as the arguments that California has only micro-electronic engineers, pure BS, there are companies like Lam Research and Applied Materials that make the machines used for micro-electronic manufacturing and anyone who has worked on the machines knows they are heavy duty machines with a ton of mechanical engineering put into them.
But there are a lot of people who want to see California fail for political reasons, there is plenty of hate from all directions directed at California, but even with their economic problems today their GDP puts pretty much everyone else to shame. Hell, they are supporting some of the other states with Federal tax dollars taken from California.
There seems to be some serious ignorance on manufacturing in California. There are several equipment manufacturers in California who produce the heavy manufacturing tooling used for micro-electronics manufacturing. As someone with experience installing and maintaining these machines I can assure everyone that the mechanical engineers in California will have no problem designing and building cars.
While places like Detroit do have better expertise in automotive specific engineering, i.e. chassis, the engineers in California are far from devoid of knowledge and expertise in heavy equipment and mechanical engineering. The heavy machines designed and manufactured in California today are considerably more complicated than a car.
It is very easy to start a project on sourceforge and once it has been started it will stick around no matter what. This means that many projects are started on a whim or from what at first seems like a great idea but eventually are abandoned for a wide array of reasons.
While it is possible that the reason a project is abandoned is due to competence there is no way to verify this unless a project reaches the point where some code is uploaded to the version system or released for download there is no means of measuring competence. When you have the code then you can measure competence.
On the whole commercial products do not provide source code and when they fail you never even hear about the failure. There is no way to compare abandoned or even garbage open source projects on sourceforge directly with the commercial market where failure and incompetence are hidden in the commercial market.
If you really want to know if open source is competent then you need to compare the software that is used with the industry as a whole. There have been a few of these studies over the years and popular open source applications fair very well.
In this report there is a reference to a 2003 study by a company named Reason that analyses software code.
In Table 2 of the report the Linux kernel version 2.4.19 TCP/IP stack had a defects/KLSC of 0.10 while the industry networking code values for the best third of software houses was less than 0.15, the middle third is 0.15 to 0.35 and the worst third are > 0.35.
They also compared Apache 2.1-dev release with a defects/KLSC of 0.53 compared to similar industry software that ranked less than 0.36 for the top third, 0.36 to 0.71 for the middle third and greater than 0.71 for the worst third.
Open source is not incompetent, it easily falls inline with commercial software.
Can you find open source applications with bugs, issues, and bad code, absolutely yes.
Can you find closed source applications with bugs, issues, and bad code, absolutely yes on the bugs and issues, you have no idea on the code.
From another study on the costs involved in auto manufacturing completed at MIT Vehicle Manufacturing Assembly Labor and Other Manufacturing Costs = 6.5% of MSRP
From the Bureau of Labor Statistics the median wage for employees working in auto manufacturing is $58,400.
Assuming an average family household and both adults work in auto manufacturing the gross income will be at least $116, 800. Looking at IRS statistics for the adjusted gross income level of $100,000 to $200,000 the average household income is $132,881 and after deductions paid $17,388 in income tax. The is an effective 13% tax rate on gross income.
So on a $25,000 car with 6.5% going to wages and an effective 13% tax rate on those wages the portion of the retail cost is $211.25 and add to that the corporate gross profit of 6% from the Stanford auto manufacturing study and a 35% tax rate we have another $525 for a total of $736.25 of income tax in the retail price of a $25,000 automobile which is 2.9%.
And yes, I know there are all kinds of other little taxes here and there you want to throw in to where we are no longer talking about income tax but it becomes so convoluted its not clear exactly how everything is associated anymore, but it doesn't matter. Even if the auto manufacturing workers paid 100% of their income in income taxes you still would not be even close to 22%.
But setting all of that data showing the 22% is bogus aside and just assuming this fantasy world is real lets take a quick look at this Fair Tax. With the word "Fair" in its name it sounds great, we all like fair don't we, but reading Boortz he specifically states that "the FairTax plan was revenue neutral". Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you are suggesting but it appears you want no taxes while the FairTax being revenue neutral is not a no tax plan but instead is just tax reform with the same level of taxation but shifted around so revenue for the government, corporations and employees remains the same.
But even in Boortz' comments he makes some outlandish suggestions such as "When the FairTax is implemented, and when business and personal income and payroll taxes disappear, your employer is going to have to make a decision. He will either take some or the entire amount he had been withholding for federal income and payroll taxes and add it to your weekly check, or he will readjust your pay figures so that your entire paycheck will be equal to what you used to call "take home pay" before the FairTax."
HA HA HA!!! Now that is hilarious! Eliminate the payroll tax, which in layman terms means take away the Social Security and Medicare safety net that ensures a minimal level of support for U.S. workers when they reach retirement age, and let the corporations decide if they should keep all that money themselves or maybe if they are nice they will give the U.S. workers some crumbs. Sorry but in the real world history has shown over and over and over that given the opportunity the U.S. worker will get screwed. Scrap that "Fair" Tax plan and try working out something more realistic. :)
Actually, using your scenario and even real world data, no, income taxes are not an issue for manufacturing in the United States.
I believe you and I will have a very strong agreement on the importance of manufacturing in the United States. It is not only important for the United States economically but also for our national security and future prosperity. But where we will disagree is on income taxes imposed on manufacturing corporations.
First let me state that I think you are on to a very accurate and strong principle that has to do with global competition. Part of the cost in global competition is related to taxes and the cost of running the government of each nation. If the United States is bearing the burden of security costs around the world while other nations skimp on governmental security expenses then the United States will be placed at a significant economic disadvantage. All one has to do is look at French history before and after the American Revolutionary War to see how economic burden can destroy a nation.
That said, corporate taxes are levied on Gross Profits, not Retail Sales Prices. Based on this fact it becomes readily apparent that the amount of tax dollars in the retail price of a manufactured good is completely dependant upon the Gross Profit Margin. So we end up with the following equation:
gross % margin = tax % of retail price / corporate % tax rate
You say on average U.S. manufacturers have a 22% income tax burden attached to the price of retail goods. So we can calculate the average gross margin and verify this with real world numbers. 22% / 35% = 63% Gross Margin.
I am not sure where you acquired that 22% number but to me it looks like BS. From my personal experience with gross margins in electronics manufacturing a 63% gross margin profit is unheard of. In fact, based on recent data the highest gross margin for electronics manufacturers was 58.4%. From my experience the average gross margin is more like 20% to 40%.
And while I understand you are only making a point with the auto analogy I must point out that auto manufacturers have abysmal profit margins and as a result the average cost of corporate income taxes on the retail price of a car is more like 1%.
No, I have done some research in the past using real economic numbers and came to the same conclusion before all these articles started hitting the news. Much of the economic data collected by the federal government is readily accessible for anyone to analyze. Well unless of course its all just a big conspiracy. :)
Well, it is definitely not a lie, I have witnessed some of the financial gaming first hand. But I agree that it can make the masses feel wronged and becomes a political bullet point.
Yes, and since you called me on it I will also admit that the title in my comment is inflammatory and not 100% accurate. :)
There have only been a few years here and there when median income has dropped and you are correct that for the most part the standard of living in the U.S. has improved in the long run.
But here is a fact that you can verify by pulling the numbers yourself. From the late 1940s to the mid 1970s the GDP and median individual income increased at an average rate of 4.23% and 2.04% respectively. From the mid 1970s to 2008 GDP and median individual income increased at an average rate of 2.57% and 0.48% respectively.
The past 30 or so years the average worker in the U.S. has not participated in the increases in wealth in this nation but there was a decade in there that wasn't too bad. From 1990 to 2000 GDP grew at an average of 2.80% and median individual income increased at an average of 1.26%.
But the past decade or so from 2000 to 2008 has seen GDP growth average 1.89% while median individual income has actually dropped with an average change of -0.29%.
Yes, I'm throwing out a lot of numbers without specific point and click references, that is because you will not find a nice point an click party politics web site with these numbers. You need to got to bls.gov, census.gov, and other sites that have historical data readily available to collect and analyse yourself. Well, unless it is all an evil socialist/communist conspiracy by islamofascists from planet X. :)
Actually, no, it is not caused by income taxes. There is a slide in that presentation that shows some trends in effective tax rates and if anything they are lower than they have been in a long time. And when you consider that federal spending as a percentage of GDP has fluctuated around 18% and 22% for the past 30 or so years yet the debit is increasing it makes sense, flat spending but falling tax rates equals debt.
And on factories moving over seas, absolutely, that is one of the forces affecting median income. But again it is not taxes. As an engineer I've spent my share of time going over factory finances and the largest expense, and easiest to adjust through layoffs and closing factories, is head count and salaries. Companies have done a very good job of working out deals to get tax cuts both federal and state but your average U.S. worker can't do much to compete with crap wages over seas except perhaps live in a cardboard box or move the U.S. back to the old days of the company store where you pay your employer for housing, groceries, even your church.
And I probably should not say degradation of income, its more like flat income, but I'll comment on that in a response to the coward below. :)
Not the degradation of income for 99% of the population.
Only because you are looking at the wrong end of the eye piece your using to judge society.
Are followers of bronze age religions who have learned to click a few buttons a sign of progress through technology? No.
Holding a chunk of technology in your hand that required 100 years or more of scientific research and study to develop does not transfer the progress made by the many people before the subject into the subject's mind through osmosis. It is a very common misconception that wielding technology somehow makes you an advanced technological being, it doesn't.
Without the education to fully understand the wielded technology and a good dose of critical thinking that may very well dispel the stone and bronze age myths a society has lived by for many generations the technology will only become a part of the mythology.
If instead of viewing and judging the effects of technology by looking at the end users you viewed those who actually do the study, research and development it is more likely you will find the progress you are looking for.
But I will state that continuous technological advancement and progress of humanity is not guaranteed by the advances in science and technology. While it may not be the stated intent of these religious search engines, and the political engines I've seen mentioned as well, to halt, impede, and often reverse all technological advancement and human progress that is the result they will affect if not critically addressed.
Tolerance of ignorance and stupidity are the enemies of human progress and they are the enemies of scientific and technological advancement. While individuals should be allowed to tightly grasp their failed ideologies they should not be allowed to evangelise their failed dogma without rebuttal no matter how much it hurts their feelings.
You bring up a good point about not requiring a complete monopoly nor lock-in to run afoul of the law, however, I think the facts of both Standard Oil's business practices and Microsoft's business practices made it so you were not always free to buy from competitors.
Standard Oil used business partnerships and buying up relevant assets to make it virtually impossible for competitors to bring their product to market.
The wiki article for Standard Oil shows a need for citations so I would recommend further research, however, Microsoft's practices are well documented in the Finding of Facts from the US DOJ vs Microsoft case where Microsoft was found guilty of violating anti-trust laws.
Microsoft uses similar tactics to block access to markets. So I think it is wrong to suggest that people are always free to buy from competitors, it is not that simple.
But getting back to your main point, the fact that Google has a monopoly is not an issue but if they use that monopoly position to block competitors from the market then Google will be in violation of anti-trust laws. They will not be in violation for being a monopoly, that is not illegal, they will be in violation of using their monopoly position to block competitors and protect their monopoly position from competition.
That is exactly what got Standard Oil in trouble and Microsoft as well. They used their position in the market to destroy competitors so they would not have to deal with the difficulties of market competition.
We can only wait to see if there is any merit to the case but the fact that it seems Microsoft is behind the legal attack it appears at the moment to be the MO of a corporation that has been found guilty of multiple violations of anti-trust laws.
I think what you meant to say is that all you have to do to "dehumanize" a Blastocyst is merely show a picture of one.
I am curious how it was ruled that the research was illegal due to the destruction of embryos when in fact the blastocyst is technically not an embryo and in the case of the research never will be. The embryonic stem cells are extracted from a blastocyst with is a cellular stage prior to the formation of an embryo. No embryos are destroyed. And the blastocysts are artificially fertilized outside of a human womb so they will actually never grow into an embryo let alone a human being.
Since you commented anonymously I don't know if you will see this but I will reply anyhow.
Which is why it is very important to squash the perpetuated lies about abortions being used for embryonic stem cell research. Rather than base a moral decision on visions of dead babies it is better to learn the facts. And the fact is that there is a hugely significant difference between a fertilized egg and a 3 month old fetus, and the difference becomes even more significant when we consider that these are not fertilized eggs inside a womb that have some calculable probability of gestating and growing into a human baby. We are talking about human cells that will absolutely never gestate into a human for the same reason that an unused egg lost through menstruation or sperm ejaculated during a wet dream or even a naturally fertilized egg that fails to embed to the uterus wall will absolutely positively never become human babies even though they are human cells and under the appropriate conditions would actually have a reasonable probability of becoming a human.
It is my hope that a discovery is made that will make this question moot, however, as it stands today there are significant advantages in the use of embryonic stem cells. I have no intention of going through all the article research again but a few months back I had this same discussion with another individual and based on what I have read the adult stem cells actually present a greater risk of cancer than embryonic stem cells. In fact, the wiki article you linked to provides references to research suggesting adult stem cells are the source of cancer.
But I will provide one additional link before I end my commenting, the utilization of stem cells, adult or embryonic, as a source for cures to diseases will require a plentiful supply of cells. This is exactly where adult stem cells fail as noted at the National Institutes of Health.
"Embryonic stem cells can be grown relatively easily in culture. Adult stem cells are rare in mature tissues, so isolating these cells from an adult tissue is challenging, and methods to expand their numbers in cell culture have not yet been worked out. This is an important distinction, as large numbers of cells are needed for stem cell replacement therapies."
Embryonic stem cells are not harvested from miscarriages or abortions. They are harvested from artificially fertilized eggs that grow into embryos and have reached the blastocyst phase and have grown to 50 to 150 cells in size.
The blastocyst that is the source of ebryonic stem cells has never came into contact with a uterus, has never been implanted into the wall of a uterus and absolutely positively never will develop beyond the blastocyst phase since there is no uterus in which to embed itself and start the process of developing the umbilical cord.
There are ethical issues that we need to deal with but it is important to have the facts on which to base conclusions as there are many people who try to confuse the uninformed and have them believe that the evil scientists are ripping babies from the womb and killing them to collect stem cells. This is nowhere near reality.
Actually it is not even that. The article claims to measure "Linux distribution popularity trends" when in fact, as you noted, it is a measure of Linux distribution name search popularity trends.
While the article makes an inaccurate claim the information is interesting. From my experience with freelance software development both inside and outside the United States I have the impression that CentOS, RHEL and Fedora linux distributions are much more popular than the article presumes.
So out of curiosity I modified the search terms for the trends by adding "download install" to each distribution name the author had searched and the results are similar in some cases and dramatically different in others. The desktop focused distributions show similar trends but the Ubuntu trend line is not as prominent, you can actually see the other distributions still have a significant number of searches. On the newer second tier distributions where Linux Mint was shown as wildly popular and CentOS was hanging around Puppy Linux the chart is completely different and reflects my experience in the real world, CentOS is exceedingly more popular than Mint or Puppy.
Top Tier
Newer Second Tier
A simple PHP application running on a LAMP or LAPP server can easily be created to upload files and encrypt them with a custom SSL certificate using openssl. I did a demo for something very similar for a client.
Of course there are many avenues of risk between the upload to encryption path and the decryption to download path. Some of the risk can be reduced by choosing the right hosting method.
The cheapest solution would be free web hosting for the application but I am not sure they will have an SSL connection available for the hosted application. A better solution would be to set up a private server on your home broadband connection to host the application and you could use a self signed SSL certificate.
But either way you still have some risk at your end of the SSL encryption due to man in the middle attacks by your IT group or they can easily monitor all file activity at your PC after the encryption.
As others have noted if you really don't want the information to get out then don't store it on a public server and don't use equipment at work to use or transfer the information. Other than that caveat there are some inexpensive options that can provide a significant level of protection.
With some research what you will find is that he original Section 179 tax code came about some time in the 1940s, I believe it was updated in the 1970s to include trucks for farmers, in 1996 the maximum amount that could be expensed was increased and finally when SUVs became all the rage and somebody discovered a sneaky way to squeeze personal luxury SUVs through Section 179 if you were a business owner or partner the house and senate came up with the idea of increasing the maximum from $25,000 to $100,000 and Bush signed it into law.
The truth is that most of the luxury SUVs written off as a business expense should have been investigated and prosecuted by the IRS. The linked article clearly does not interview a farmer but instead a health care consultant who obviously does not need an Ford Excursion for his business so it is obviously a personal purchase illegally written off as a business expense.
So no, Bush did not sign the original bill but he was not helping by signing off on the quadrupling of the amount that could be written off. He should have vetoed the entire bill and at the very least keep the write off maximum at previous levels if there was no way to stop the scheming altogether.
And if you read the story you will discover that the Ford Excursion was purchased by a small business owner who provides health care consulting. While it was written off as a business expense it is obviously not something purchased specifically for health care consulting.
And this is a sound concept for business costs, but again if you read the article what was actually happening was individuals who filed a K1 as a business owner or partner were purchasing what were obviously personal vehicles and writing them off as a one time business expense.
And no, the $7,500 tax credit does not equate to a $7,500 tax refund check simply because you hate Obama.
Individuals often have income, they pay income tax, the tax credit will reduce their tax burden as an incentive to purchase a vehicle that has significant benefits to all tax payers. Yes I know we could debate the benefits from now until eternity but that is the purpose.
So, speaking of honesty, what we have here are a lot of very dishonest people using tax code that is meant for business expenses to purchase monster trucks which they write off as a business expense. The business should be paying taxes on that write off because it really was not a business expense.
Warning: Extreme levels of sarcasm ahead!
From the link provided...
Because health care consultants absolutely require the most massive SUV on the market in order to provide their consulting service.
Because not only can't the health care consultant utilize a small hybrid car for his service his business just wouldn't be viable with a measly $4,000 tax credit, the tax payers really benefit from giving this guy and others $30,000 in write offs to buy their monster trucks.
Uh, yeah, everyone knows that a hummer does more to slow the flow of cash from the United States consumers to the middle east nations paying for terrorism that kills United States citizens than a Hybrid ever will, or something.
Okay, if you read the article make sure you skip that part.
Okay, that's it, I don't have any sarcasm left. What kind of dipshit would read that news article and not come to the conclusion that the Federal government under Bush was subsidizing monster trucks? Holy shit, get real.
So I am curious, did Charles Lane have a whining rant to publish in 2002 when Bush signed off on a $30,000 tax credit for monster trucks?
First let me thank you for providing a link to the information used to form your opinion. Too often people state their opinions as facts and expect everyone to accept them at face value. The internet and forums like slashdot provide an exceptional means of discussing issues and providing background information to help people understand your position.
Second, I have read about the work on adult pluripotent stem cells as an option and this is exceptional work cited in the article and shows potential to advance the fields of medicine and biosciences significantly. It also provides an opportunity to make an end run around this debate on morality for some people.
But I have to ask, did you actually read the article before you posted it or did you only read the headline and skim the content?
Although promising, both techniques share a downside. The retroviruses used to insert the genes could cause tumors in tissues grown from the cells.
Once the kinks are worked out, "the whole field is going to completely change," says stem cell researcher Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University in East Lansing. "People working on ethics will have to find something new to worry about."
Pluripotent stem cells from adult cells currently is not an option, only a valuable line of research that has the potential to create viable pluripotent stem cells from adult cells.
I think you answered your own question.
A human zygote is obviously not a person for the same reason a spermatozoa and ovam are not a person either. Am I wrong in assuming your initial inflammatory comment claiming embryonic stem cell research creates a demand for dead babies is based on the same basic assumption that a human zygote is a person? That assumption being that the zygote or blastocyst may grow into a person when inside a uterus. Or do you have some other sensible logic to explain this conclusion that a zygote is a person?
You see, a zygote is not a person, I have seen photos and video of microscopic zygotes and they are not persons. Given the right conditions and a uterus a zygote has a certain probability of growing into a person but just like spermatozoa and ovams a zygote will never grow into a person without the correct conditions. And I suspect most of the people using this argument against embryonic stem cell research know this but it is much more powerful to tell people who are uneducated in even the most basic biological functions that babies are killed to produce embryonic stem cells. If you read through the comments in your thread you will find at least one person who took the argument further, perhaps out of ignorance, and assumed these dead babies were from abortions.
But if we do assume that a zygote is a person, human, a baby and the embryonic stem cell researchers using in vitro embryos are in effect killing babies (even though they will absolutely never grow into a baby) then what will be the reaction when the adult stem cell research progresses to the point that researchers are capable of growing a viable blastocyst from any human cell, will that blastocyst be a human as well?
I suspect I already know the answer and I will likely disagree but I think it is a good question to force minds to think beyond the frail terms in which they are forming their opinions.
And that is part of the direction I am trying to lead people, no civilized society today follows the moral recommendations of the bible to the letter because honestly there is some dumb and barbaric suggestions in the bible.
I personally do not support abortions as a contraceptive method for moral reasons probably similar to yours, but I also oppose allowing a bronze age religion be used to establish civilized law when the religion itself is barbaric.
And while I thought the information I posted in the previous comments made it very clear I guess it was not clear enough, so let me state this again...
No babies are killed for stem cells,
abortions are not used for stem cell research,
no zygotes or blastocysts are removed from any women's wombs for stem cell research.
You can blather until you are blue in the face about abortions and baby killing when speaking of stem cell research and it is meaningless. Babies are not aborted to provide research material for stem cell research, this is simply a method of painting a false picture of the researchers as baby killers ripping viable babies from the womb and killing them.
The blastocysts used for stem cell research come from in vitro fertilization, the zygote never comes into contact with a uterus, it will never develop into a baby, not even close.
Now, since it is known that the blastocysts will never be babies but only present a potential if introduced into a viable uterus, and one of the responses to my comments even admitted to this, the logic behind the opposition to embryonic stem cell research has nothing to do with killing babies but instead has to do with the probability of a blastocyst growing into a baby IF it were introduced into a viable uterus.
This same logic obviously applies to the ovam and sperm cells as well. They have a similar probability of forming a baby as the in vitro blastocyst given the proper circumstances. Yes, I know, it becomes a stupid argument that requires you to start applying the logic discriminatingly, because it is a weak argument.
A sperm, ovam, in vitro zygote, and in vitro blastocyst are not babies.
Abortions are not used for stem cell research.
An embryo from in vitro fertilisation will absolutely never become a person unless it is placed inside a human womb.
A zygote or blastocyst are no more a person than a sperm or ovam.
If you consider a zygote or blastocyst to be a person solely on the probability of it becoming a person under the correct circumstances then by your own logic a sperm cell and an ovam cell are also a person due to their probability of becoming a person under the correct circumstances.
Please provide links to back up your facts. Don't take this wrong, I am not saying you are wrong, but providing links is a valuable way of sharing your knowledge because simply stating something as a fact does not make it a fact. Help us out.